YouTube offering ad-supported movies

YouTube is now offering some feature-length films for free, supported by advertisements.

It added the films to the service quietly in October to its "Movies & Shows" section, and currently has around 100 movies. Most of them are legacy movies of course, but they do include the original Terminator and Rocky, for example.

Typically, YouTube uses its Movies & Shows section to sell or rent access to feature-length films. The free streaming option showed up in October for the first time.

"We saw this opportunity based on user demand, beyond just offering paid movies. Can we do ad-supported movies, free to the user?" Rohit Dhawan, director of product management at YouTube, told AdAge.

"It also presents a nice opportunity for advertisers."

In the future, Dhawan thinks that some individual films on the service will be sponsored by advertisers.